Clementine

In all of my favorite books, the adventure starts with the protagonist making a bad decision. After that bad decision, they meet someone, usually the other main character, and then something absolutely terrible happens. But in the end, good triumphs evil, perhaps there’s a love confession or two, and the main characters live happily ever after.

That’s what I tell myself every time I sneak into the Black Forest.

I’d like to say that I’m not rebellious, I just highly detest pointless rules—my least favorite being: ‘Don’t go into the Black Forest’. There’s nothing dangerous about it as long as you don’t do anything stupid, and I usually play it safe when it comes to my well-being.

(…Usually.)

Anyhow, I feel as though introductions are in order. My name is Clementine Hazelwood, a resident of the great kingdom Moonflower Valley and a small, auburn-furred cat humanimal.

A humanimal is a species that teeters between human and animal. We’re shapeshifters, essentially, except I can’t live forever or turn into just any living thing in Reverie Realm. When I’m standing Up, I look like a regular human, and when I’m on All-Fours—in other words, when I’ve ‘transformed’—I’m just a regular cat but I can still speak. There are tons of subspecies; cats, (obviously), rabbits, wolves, deer, dogs, and plenty of others that I won’t bother listing because, well, we’d be here forever.

I pull on the brakes of my bicycle as the Sunrise Tower comes into view and plant my feet on the ground to steady myself. I look around as casually as I can to see if I’m alone. It’s not entirely necessary—few people hang out by this part of the forest and the watchtowers are usually empty—however, you can never be too careful with these kinds of things.

I hide my bike in a bush and hurry into the Black Forest, careful to avoid tripping on gnarled roots from the overgrown trees slowly creeping into the valley. I poke around the bushes and duck under low-hanging branches—and I mean the really low-hanging branches—as I make my way to the bright clearing where I spend most of my post-school afternoons. The air is cool, the result of the densely wooded forest acting as a cover from the blazing summer sun. When I reach my small clearing, I pause and take in a breath of the mossy air.

After a long day of midterms testing, this is exactly what I need.

I rest my satchel on my favorite moss-covered stone and set off deeper into the forest, in a direction I haven’t gone down since spring break. The soft murmur of a nearby brook overlaps the merry chirping of the birds overhead, and the bushes sway softly in the light breeze. Hang on… There is no breeze.

I tilt my head and walk towards the bushes, crouching down to peer between the leaves and branches.

“Must’ve been a rabbit,” I say out loud when it turns out to be empty. I turn around and let out a surprised laugh. Just across from me, a small bush stands in a beam of soft sunlight, as though it’s the main character of a musical. Large, round, smooth purple berries weigh down the branches like gleaming fruit of temptation. My mind wanders back to what I was thinking on my way here.

In most of my favorite books, the adventure starts with the main character making a bad decision.

“Really?” I ask nobody in particular, rolling my eyes at the stupid thing I’m about to do. I plod over to the bush and crouch down once again, shaking my head at myself. The berries are probably poisonous. Likely not ‘drop dead immediately’ poisonous, but ‘you really shouldn’t eat me’ poisonous.

To humor myself, I lift the berry to my lips as if about to pop it into my mouth.

“Don’t eat that!”

Even though my heart jumps into my throat, I hardly flinch as I toss the berry over my shoulder and spin around. Please don’t be a soldier, I beg silently. Actually, I amend, please don’t be my mom.

“What the—?” It’s moments like these when I wonder where my eloquent nature runs off to. There are a million things running through my mind as I stare at the strangely dressed girl in front of me, and many of them are full sentences, but of course my brain and mouth won’t cooperate.

The girl narrows her bright green eyes at me and crosses her arms across her chest, shifting her sage green cloak to reveal a weapon-studded holster around her waist.

“You’re not my mom,” I point out in a striking moment of brilliance.

“Thanks for the tip,” she replies. Her eyes scan me for a moment before she says, “Are you from the Valley?”

“Aren’t you?”

She nods, but I get the feeling it’s not in response to my question. “I’m guessing you’re not very familiar with the dangers of the Black Forest, then.”

“What does me being from Moonflower Valley have to do with that?”

The girl raises her left hand and taps her palm, gesturing for me to do the same.

“Oh!” My palm is red and blotchy as if I just reached down into a swarm of violent ants. I didn’t notice it before, but now that I’m staring at the angry welt, it begins to throb with a burning sort of pain.

“Yeah, that was a moonberry you were ogling,” the girl supplies, reaching into a pocket on the inside of her cloak. “They’re pretty poisonous and’ll probably kill you if you breathe the same air for too long.” She says this all calmly as I stare in horror at the small, unassuming bush beside me. Am I being paranoid, or is it laughing at me? Can plants even laugh?

“Well, it was nice knowing you,” I say, and I’m only partially joking.

“Here, drink this,” she says, pressing a heavy vial into the hand not currently falling off. “But don’t—”

What I assume is the antidote lasts about half a second in the glass container before I empty it into my mouth in a rather impressive display of stupid desperation. The burning sensation in my palm cools almost instantly, but the welts—which have already crept halfway up my arm—remain, proudly reminding me of my decidedly dumb decision.

“—drink all of it,” the girl finishes, the frown on her face creeping into her voice. “Have fun with the side effects—they can get pretty ugly.”

“Did I just—that’s nice.” I nod, trying to estimate just how many times I’ll embarrass myself before this conversation is over.

“I hate to be that person,” the girl says slowly, “but you owe me thirty coins.”

“You mean you don’t want to help a random girl in the woods for free out of the goodness of your heart?” I ask, recapping her vial and handing it back to her. “Well, there goes my allowance.”

“Supply and demand, you know?” she replies, tucking it back into her cloak. “It’s not every day you get lucky enough to run into a friendly stranger with just the antidote that you need, is it?”

“You make a good point. But I don’t have any money on me right now—you trust me enough to meet me back here tomorrow, same time?”

“I guess I’ll have to—uh…” She tilts her head at me.

“Clementine,” I say, wincing slightly at my churning stomach. 

“That would be the side effects,” she points out as I wrap my arms around my protesting waist. “You alright?”

“It’s nothing a glass of water won’t fix,” I assure her, even as stars creep into the edge of my vision.

“Okay, you get home safe, Clementine,” she says, waving slightly as she turns around. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hang on, what about your name?” I call after her, trying not to gag on the bile building up in my mouth.

“I’m Flynne,” she says without turning around, “the one and only.”